


the elevator is still broken

by oonaseckar



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Penny is a physicist, Physicist! Penny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27510556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Alt. universe: Penny is a physicist!  And Wyatt is a very happy man.The elevator is still broken.  But pretty much everything else is different.
Relationships: Leonard Hofstadter/Penny, Penny/Leslie Winkle, Sheldon Cooper/Penny
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

Penny shoved her way through the apartment building's revolving door. She also managed to drag her wheeled case through without getting stuck or garroted, a triumph compared to her first attempt that same morning. The concierge gave her a wink, and beckoned her over. He was super-nice! It was going to be so great living somewhere where all of them could feel secure, and like they had friends in the building!

She tottered over. (Three inch heels had been kind of a dumb choice. At least, for the day she moved apartments with her boyfriend, and the two pals they'd be sharing with, she had to admit. Plus they felt kind of _whorish_.)

'Well, little lady! You got no fwends wunning awound after you! Shame on them!" He leered at her amiably, and Penny felt like she should be slightly offended. On the other hand it was good to know that her efforts with the Swedish earphones and dirndl hadn't gone _entirely_ unappreciated. Her polite smile got an earnest assurance that if she was ever lonely for company then he, Barry Kripke, was here _twenty-four seven, night and day._ Plus that he had an _actual_ knight's suit of shining armor, with battle scars from two reenactments.

She'd never been so glad to see Sheldon, as he marched through the regular doorway, magisterially shouting out instructions to Leonard and Leslie as they struggled with the couch.

Of course, it was one thing to talk that way to Leonard, but to Leslie... No, it was never going to work. Halfway through the door, either the sofa got stuck, or Leslie dropped her end of it, or a combination of both. Penny was going for the combo. "I'll help you," she squeaked anxiously, running over. But too late.

Leslie was already crawling over the cushions into the foyer, and her face was the face of doom as she headed towards Sheldon. "Hey, asshole, enough with the micromanaging asshole instructions! You talk like nobody here has mastered imaginary number theory, and we all need you to help us fit an arcminute into a radian. Let me advise you how to fit a _tentpole_ up your _tight-ass Texan rear-end_ , you bleating bellwether! No, better yet, let me _demonstrate_!"


	2. Chapter 2

This was clearly going to deteriorate into another situation where Leslie played silver-back to Sheldon's Roadrunner. Penny's duty as a good girlfriend, and best girlfriend, was clearly _intervention_. She dived between the two of them, as Sheldon flinched back. "Leslie! Uh, now you know Shellie doesn't mean any harm." And damn the lovely Mary: when was Penny going to be able to break that acquired petname? "Let's you and me go get ourselves an eggcream at that place over the street, now!" She patted at Leslie's pink, furious face and smoothed out a crazy curl with fondness. "Just us girls: leave the menfolk to do their butch thing with the heavy lifting."

It was clearly working. Leslie was visibly soothed. Or distracted, at least. Because, from taut with fury, her face relaxed into a curious, and doubtful speculation. All that, as she stroked Penny's hand where it lay on her hair, absently. "Do you really think they're up to the job?"

They turned in synchrony, to where Sheldon huddled, with a defensively angry face, against the desk, and Leonard sat hopelessly on the end of the sofa where he'd flopped. The doorway was blocked, and the people circumnavigating it via the revolving entrance glared as they passed.

"Doubt it. Don't care," Leslie answered herself, decisively. "That drink sounds aces. But we're going to the bar next door, not the diner. Boys, you'd better have that place furnished by the time we get back. Expect us when you see us. Expect us sufficiently juiced to give you unasked lapdances if you look at us funny. Oh, you know the elevator's broken, right?"


	3. Chapter 3

Penny really still wanted to be a _good girlfriend._ She made a mimsy, apologetic face as she tripped over to Sheldon on the slut heels. Flinching at the overly showy cheek-kiss, he muttered, "Oh, all very well, but a drinkle with La Winkle is _not_ going to get your prep done for your TA duties. And what about your string theory class on Monday?'

She just gave him a pleading shrug, that would have given her some cleavage if it could have crawled out of her beige scoop-neck. "It's _Leslie_ ," she said helplessly. And Sheldon considered a moment, and shrugged in turn. The argument was decisively won.

xxx

Penny was planning on one, maybe _two_ low-alcohol beers, and coaxing Leslie into signing up for the college ladies' hockey team, then heading back to help out the boys with the apartment furbishment. It worked out at a few more drinks than that, which was fine really: she wasn't back in the department for two days, and the boys could probably manage anyway.

Getting drunk was fine: it took her back to the middle year of high school, to the dear old days before her dad had taken a look around at her friends. Had totted up the teen pregnancies, the little habits and the eating disorders, the model agency clips (why to God was this the worst thing of all?) and gone ex-army hardass on her ass.

But she braced herself quickly at that, and reminded herself that British single-sex boarding school had actually been great! She'd learnt to 'brew a cuppa' strong enough to trot a mouse on! She'd got experience in close negotiation with crazy academic bitches! She'd had her first kiss with a girl, been thrown out and become a raging scandal! Then directly on to the crammers, scholarship applications, Harvard and Caltech applications that needed a private tutor just to fill in...

Yep, without Dad flipping out and packing her off to the academic equivalent of bootcamp at fourteen, she might be a trailerpark pregnant welfare mom with a missing front tooth and a neighborly weed-farmer, by now! (She got a grip. There was no way that sounded attractive, right now with a couple of glasses of merlot inside her. There was no way it sounded _restful_.)


	4. Chapter 4

No! Instead, she was a strong, independent, academically successful intellectual powerhouse, with a genius arm-candy boyfriend! And no sex-life!

"You know you're talking out loud, right?" It was Leslie's hand on her hand, as much as her words, that woke Penny up to the awful reality of her indiscretion. There was no way Leslie was just letting _that_ one go.

Penny gave Leslie a shifty look, and felt that she really ought to shift her hand out from under Leslie's, too. This was the other problem with hanging out with Leslie, apart from it making her think about her life. Maybe that was the drinking, but she thought it was partly Leslie too.

She leaned in, and bumped foreheads with her bud. "I have to stop hanging out with you," she stage-whispered heavily, and nodded so that they bumped heads a few more times. Leslie stabilized Penny's head with the palm of her hand, and scrutinized her with a fairly steady eye.

"Any reason?" she asked equably.

Penny considered, and felt a sore sinking for some reason in the middle of her chest. She was getting that a lot, lately. She was getting it when she thought too much about Leslie.


	5. Chapter 5

She thought too much about Leslie. 'I've only known you for half a semester. Since Shellie got canned at Yale, and we took the student housing second choice and got placements next door to you,' she pointed out. It was a reasonable point.

Leslie didn't seem to think so. 'And?' she said impatiently. 'Make your case. We're still working through the data, get to the deduction.'

But the deduction was a secret. It was a secret from Penny, too: sometimes she ran through all the circumstances of her life, every factor and variable of it, ending with the existence and presence in it of Leslie Winkle. And she felt, often, as if she were on the verge of some ruinous conclusion.

So it was as much of a shock to her, as to Leslie, when her spine decided to push her forward to whisper in Leslie's ear. And her mouth decided the whisper would be, 'Sometimes I think I like you better than Sheldon.'

Leslie's face, though: it didn't look like _anything_ was much of a shock to Leslie. Just the same old pointy-chinned witch-face as ever, the evil-eye as prevalent, the air of a generalized unimpressed glare directed at the rest of the universe. Not shocked, at all. 'Well, of course you do,' Leslie said. It was less reassurance than someone considering a paper's closing paragraph, and pronouncing it soundly evidence-based. 'You're a highly academically gifted woman with reasonable amounts of common sense. When you're not blasted, at least. I'm a wonderful human being, and _extremely likeable_ ,' she went on to point out. 'At least, compared to Sheldon.'

But Penny shook her head, and rolled her glass in her hand, the last few drops of her nice Shiraz winking at her sadly. 'Sheldon is the best thing that ever happened to me. He's the rock of my life.'

Leslie just leaned back and looked at her a moment, without comment. Then said, 'Keep letting Daddy tell you that, Princess. You know, your critical thinking skills are _excellent_. It's a pity you only apply them when you're getting paid for it.'


End file.
